Dear Fellow Members
I thought it might be helpful if I posted a short note about how I intended to proceed in considering the poems I have been offered. I began this task earlier this week, and it is already apparent to me that I shall not be able to complete my comments on six poems by the end of the coming week as originally announced. As well as the size of the task itself, there are some incidental but unavoidable domestic reasons for this.
Instead, therefore, what I shall do is take each poem I choose to address in turn and, over a period of time – not too long a time, I hope - post my responses one by one. This plan will have the added advantage of allowing you time to consider each poem in the light of my own remarks before another is posted and, if you wished, to post observations of your own. By the way, I do not expect myself to add further comments to such discussions.
I mentioned the number of poems above. It may be that in the event I shall not choose six poems to work on from the ten I have been sent. Whether I take six or slightly fewer, however, it is important for the poets whose poems are not selected not to assume that I have judged their poems uninteresting. It would just be that I felt not properly qualified to offer useful comment on their particular submission. In other words, it would be a reflection on myself, not on them.
Finally, though it should not be necessary to say this, I want to state clearly that the opinions I shall be expressing are offered in good faith in the hope that the poets concerned might find something useful in what I had to say, whether for the poem in question or for poems they have still to write. Rather than clutter my comments by repeating such phrases as “in my opinion” and “to my mind”, I shall generally just say straight out what I think. If that gives my remarks a slightly formal air, I apologize, but I hope that everyone will read them in the spirit I have just indicated.
Kind regards to all…
Clive Watkins
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